3 Steps For Building Self Confidence: It’s Not What You Think

Why it is so hard to become confident?
Millions of people have spent years trying to become confident without succeeding.
When those people begin the quest they usually start by looking for online tips that can help them become confident quickly and this is usually what they come across:

• Say “I like myself” everyday out loud: Not knowing the fact that the subconscious mind refuses to accept beliefs before solid proof is provided. Your subconscious will respond to this message saying, “Really, why do you feel worthless then if you like yourself?”
• Accept yourself: Not knowing the fact that the subconscious mind can’t accept something it doesn’t like unless it can’t be changed. You can accept the death of a close relative but even if you used all the known techniques in the world you won’t convince your subconscious mind to accept something you don’t like about yourself that can be changed.
• Repeat affirmations: Not knowing that saying “I am confident” while you are not makes the subconscious mind believe that you are fooling it and thus results in bad emotions such as shame. A recent study has proven that people who repeat affirmations that are against their true beliefs about themselves tend to feel down, guilty and less confident.

How to really become self confident?Self confidence is built, it can’t be created by affirmations nor it can be acquired over night.

Self confidence is all about trusting your skills and convincing your subconscious mind that you are really worthy.

If you lack certain skills then you are likely to feel shaky and anxious during the situations that require these skills. If you developed the specific skills that you lack and started using them successfully, your subconscious mind will start to trust you and you will start to feel confident.

Think of the subconscious mind as someone standing aside and evaluating your actions: if he saw you performing well he won’t make you feel anxious the next time he sees you going through the same situation.

Now what if that person standing beside you, saw you in the morning saying ‘I like myself’ and in the evening shaking in front of a crowd? Won’t he feel frustrated? Tricked even?
A Step-by-step guide to becoming truly confident

Like everything worth doing in life, there is one thing that separates those that will succeed from those that fail: Doing The Work.

As mentioned earlier, self confidence – one of life’s most treasure traits – won’t be achieved by repeating how great you are in the mirror every morning. The only only way to build self confidence it to become truly great – task by task. Here’s how:

Step one: determine the problematic area: Contrary to common beliefs self confidence is not a general trait but each one of us has different levels of confidence in different areas of his life. While you might be very confident in browsing the internet you might fear public speaking

Step two: Find the missing skills: The second step you should do is figuring out the missing skills that are preventing you from feeling confident in a certain area. Once you find these skills you must develop them.

Step three: wait until the subconscious mind notices: When you develop these missing skills you won’t feel confident right away but instead your subconscious mind has to watch you performing well many times before it can trust you.

In short, don’t rush to become confident overnight with tricks because they never work. Instead focus on developing your missing skills, building trust in yourself and you will become really confident.

Farouk Radwan is the founder of 2KnowMyself – The Ultimate source for understanding yourself and others.